Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor Papers #12013, Rare Book Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Transferred from the Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in December 1983.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Laura K. O'Keefe, August 1985

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Barzun, Jacques, 1907-
• Detective and mystery stories.
• Taylor, Louis Hertig, fl. 1920.
• Taylor, Wendell Hertig, 1905-1985.

Jacques Barzun, professor and critic, and Wendell Hertig Taylor, a retired scientist, were life long friends and enthusiastic readers, critics, and collectors of detective fiction. In the early 1970s, they began donating many of their books to the Rare Book Room of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In appreciation, the library renamed its mystery collection "The Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor Collection of Crime and Detection."

Barzun and Taylor compiled and edited A Catalogue of Crime, a reference guide to detective stories. They sent typed drafts of the book, along with related materials, to the Rare Book Collection which transferred them to the Southern Historical Collection in 1983.

Most of these items are letters, notes, and typed drafts of Barzun and Taylor's A Catalogue of Crime, and the supplements to it that appeared in Barzun's The Armchair Detective. There are also four detective stories and articles written by Wendell Hertig Taylor and Louise Hertig Taylor in the 1920s, and typed notes for Fifty Classics of Crime, a series of re issued noteworthy mysteries, which Barzun and Taylor edited.